US Researchers Find Glyphosate in Air and Water

Photo courtesy: IRRI Images via flickr

Mississippi and Iowa, two big farm states, were recently tested for glyphosate levels in the air and water. Researchers found the key ingredient of Monsanto's Roundup herbicide in every stream sample tested, Scientific American reports.

The magazine quotes Paul Capel, environmental chemist and head of the agricultural chemicals team at the U.S. Geological Survey Office, saying: "It is out there in significant levels. It is out there consistently."

But Capel said more tests were needed to determine how harmful the chemical, glyphosate, might be to people and animals.

However, while a politically-guided agency needs more tests—and probably more tests after that—to make a public statement regarding the health effects of the chemical, some people don't need tests to be sure what those effects are.

People like Viviana Peralta in San Jorge, Argentina. Peralta's baby daughter suffers acute asthma attacks every time a crop duster sprays herbicides and pesticides near her house, which sits in an agriculture-rich province 600 kilometers from Buenos Aires.

A Le Monde story tells of Peralta's experiences, saying that she eventually made the connection between her daughter's asthma attacks and the chemical sprayings—a suspicion that a pediatrician would later confirm. Glyphosate was found present in Ailen's blood.

Le Monde reports more about the town of San Jorge:

In San Jorge, cancer rates have spiked 30% in the past 10 years. Residents say that following a crop dusting, their lips turn blue and their tongues swell. Chickens die. Dogs and cats shed their hair. Bees disappear and birds become scarce.

And, the story continues, San Jorge is not alone:

In the province of Chaco, which borders Paraguay, a study carried out over the past 10 years in a town called La Leonesa suggests that cancer rates have tripled while the incidence of malformations has quadrupled. The situation has created tensions between residents and rice farmers, who use glyphosate and spray from airplanes...

Andres Carrasco, an embryologist from the University of Buenos Aires, published a study in late 2010 demonstrating the toxic effects glyphosate can have on amphibian embryos. His work has earned him no shortage of enemies. He was physically attacked on a visit to La Leonesa and the conference he was scheduled to give there was canceled.

Carrasco is quoted saying he hasn't even made any new discoveries. "I just confirmed what other scientists had already discovered. The scientific evidence is there. Above all, there are the hundreds of [ill and malformed] people who are the living proof of this health emergency."

Apparently, though, that scientific evidence is not enough for the U.S. Geological Survey Office, or any other federal government agency, to show much concern about the effects of glyphosate on public health, despite finding it in every water sample tested.

(To be clear, the EPA is reviewing the chemical, but more than 30 years into its use and with a deadline for a decision still years away, it's not exactly treating it with any urgency.)

Superweeds Are The Result of Monsanto's "Roundup"

Photo courtesy: Peter Blanchard, Flickr/cc BY-SA

All hail the rise of super-weeds! TreeHugger has already thanked Monsanto for helping a tenacious, fast-growing, brand new kind of plant evolve. But the latest revelations from a study published in Weed Science reveal the details how dousing weeds with Roundup have caused the evolution of a "super-weed" that can grow up to 3 inches a day -- and the impact new, herbicide-resistant weeds might have on global food production.

Fast Company has more:

A new series of studies released by Weed Science this month finds at least 21 weed species have become resistant to the popular herbicide glyphosate (sold as Monsanto's Roundup), and a growing number survive multiple herbicides, so-called "super-weeds." The same selection pressure creating bacteria resistant to multiple antibiotics is leading to the rapid evolution of plants that survive modern herbicides. If the trend continues, yields could drop and food costs climb as weeds grow more difficult to uproot.

Remember, Roundup is the most widely used herbicide in the world. Much of the modern food production system has come to rely on it -- and as it becomes harder and more expensive to get rid of weeds (and super-weeds) in a world where the market have grown accustomed to an artificially deflated cost of weed-killing, this Roundup trouble could cause global food prices to spike.

So it's not just the rise of mutant super-weeds that we have to watch out now for -- super weeds which, by the way, have in some cases grown so gnarly that they destroy the farm equipment employed to attempt to tame it. These super weeds have grown resistant not just to Roundup, but to multiple herbicides. FC describes them thusly:

"Super-strains of plants like pigweed--which grows three inches a day and is tough enough to damage farm machinery--have emerged, which may dramatically reduce the options for farmers to control them. The alternatives are usually more dangerous chemicals or plowing and mulching fields, undermining many of the environmental benefits biotech crops are supposed to offer. It's 'the single largest threat to production agriculture that we have ever seen,' claims Andrew Wargo III, president of the Arkansas Association of Conservation Districts."

Indeed, reports of flourishing super-weeds are alarming. But more frightening is the prospect of a shock to global food prices at a time when they're already volatile, already rising -- and thanks to climate change, projected to keep doing so.